Skip to main content

The Bucket List



Only a man with too much time on his hands and maybe too little hope in his heart will ponder about his bucket list when in the prime of his life. A bucket list, for those who do not know, is a list of things that you want to do before you die. It originated from its more well known cousin 'to kick the bucket'.

Me, I thought about it when I had neither much time in my hands nor any lack of hope in my heart. The thought was by all means intentional because what one wants to do before one dies is perhaps what one really wants to do in life, but never thought possible once life started 'doing' him. Though the greatest wonder about our world, despite all the efforts of every mathematician and scientist to model every possible event and outcome, is that one can never really predict what is going to happen tomorrow. It is this unpredictability and how we dealt with it that has both made men and broken others.

And so when my friends asked me about what was in my bucket list, I told them I wanted to travel, see the world. Simple reason. The world is a really beautiful place that it would be a pity if one were to die without daring to venture out and see and feel for himself the beauty one had been missing out.

Though now that some of the alcohol is out of my head and some reason has sauntered in again, I am not so sure if my dying moments is one that should be spent in a place I barely know or one where I began my life in.

For me, that would be India. It is one place I loathe to go back now because it is not the same place I left more than 10 years ago. The people are different, the buildings are different, it is anything but an saddening vision of a country where technology, westernisation and money are rapidly displacing culture, community and family as the foundations of the country.

Though, as any man grows old, the call of the land he was born on will always be too hard to resist. Maybe it is nostalgia, maybe it is the numerous books and films I have watched about Indian men, who toil away on foreign lands to eventually return to their homeland. Whatever the reason, I guess I will skip all that travelling and just return home. The people may be different, the buildings may be different but it is only there that I can relive the dreams, hopes and memories when I first stepped into this world. And that would be certainly worth reliving before one's final moments.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Journey to the West : Mind Your Language

"Lettuce, tomatoes, onions and spinach", I pointed out to the lady wearing the apron behind the counter. She looked at me questioningly. "LET-USE, TOE-MAT-OH, OH-NION, SPEA-NATCH", I repeated with better enunciation. She looked back down at the the multiple compartments of colourful mix of vegetables, leaves and fruits and methodically grabbed some from each, while repeating the names of the ones she grabbed. "Let-us, Toe-mado, Ah-nion, Spee-Nuch", she clarified. I shrank a bit in embarrassment. With every passing day in the country, my belief that the English education that I received in a former British Colony, that set high and rarely achieved standards in English for its students, was of substandard quality, strengthens. In a well intentioned effort to assimilate, I have over the past couple of months tried to mimic the pronunciation of the Texans. "Howz'it goin man?" "Ye'no"   "Can I ha...

Life in the Time of Corona

I can't remember the last time I felt I had this much time. Not that I was never the beneficiary of a balanced life within socialist Europe, but I had squandered much of it away, jumping from the consumption of ever immersive electronic devices, forgetful routines and the maintenance of social relationships. A digital detox felt timely. Faced with a swath of unfilled time, here I was blogging again after ages (does creative pursuits such as writing does not fall within digital detox?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). Time had flown. 2020 is a year that will live in all our memories till the end of our lives, not so much because of what happened, but because of what did not happen. A year that started promisingly with two memorable marriages of family and friend came to a halt as a tiny microorganism proved how vulnerable we humans still were. I remember when colleagues in the office laughed as a Chinese friend hoarded masks so she could send them back home. A month later they were asking her where the...

An Eye for an Eye

"Something that three or four years ago you told me was one of the touchstones of maturity: being nice to people even when they’re not nice to you…" - William Styron It was an plan that came out of nowhere. Perhaps half depressed by the winter and half depressed by the inactivity at work, there was sufficient turmoil in the mind to create these type of plans and then let it fester, until something that started off with a what-if turned into a why-not. It would have been the perfect revenge for the past hurt and humiliation that was yet to completely heal.  The circumstances were similar. On one side, an eager visitor who had traveled far to say "Hello" and on the other side, a host, bewildered and surprised by this visit. In the first case, the host would not receive the visitor, who would turn back humiliated and vowing never again. Now the roles were reversed and I was the host. What if I agreed to receive? What if in reality I did not plan to receive? ...